President Kathleen Waldron

"At William Paterson University, we are committed to providing an education that is outstanding and affordable. We continue to be proud of our many accomplishments with regard to academic excellence and student success."

She specializes in Medieval art and its many modern manifestations, but her interests also include the arts of Africa and the Islamic world. Her research combines traditional art history with the contemporary perspectives of Visual Culture and Digital Humanities.

Her teaching encompasses a wide variety of topics, such as Understanding Art (ARTH 1010; both in-person and online), Caves to Cathedrals (ARTH 1110), Greek and Roman Art (ARTH 2240), Medieval Art (ARTH 2280), Islamic Art (ARTH 3380), The Arts of Africa (ARTH 2330), Research Methods in Art History (ARTH 3000), and a special topics class in Body Art (ARTH 3990).

She also has a second Masters degree in Education, and serves as the departmental liaison to the College of Education. In addition to advising students with a double major, she has a pedagogical expertise and interest that enhances her work at WPU in immeasurable ways.

Professor Williams is a founding member of the Material Collective, a scholarly working group that is best described by our Manifesto, which states: “As a collaborative of students of visual culture, Material Collective seeks to foster a safe space for alternative ways of thinking about objects. We strive for transparency in our practice, and we encourage the same in our institutional surroundings. Our project touches upon both form and content, as we pursue a lyrical and experimental style of writing along with a more humane, collaborative, and supportive process of scholarship.” We began as mostly medievalists, and mainly art historians, but we are ever expanding to include all sorts of people interested in thinking about visual and material culture. We maintain an active blog at thematerialcollective.org.

She serves on the board of the American Society for Irish Medieval Studies (ASIMS) as well as on the editorial board of the journal Different Visions.

Additional publications (several of these are also posted on academia.edu):

“Constructing the Market Cross at Tuam: The Role of Cultural Patriotism in the Study of Irish High Crosses,” in C. Hourihane, ed., From Ireland Coming: Irish Art from the Early Christian to the Late Gothic Periods and its Context within Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).

“Warrior Kings and Savvy Abbots: The Cross of the Scriptures, Clonmacnois,” Avista Forum: Journal of the Association Villard de Honnecourt for the Interdisciplinary Study of Medieval Technology, Science, and Art, Volume 12, Number 1, (Fall 1999): 4-11.